Marama’s head appeared as I was gathering up my headphones and sandwich. She rested her chin on my locker door.
‘If you’re going to be looking at gender in Moby Dick for your final essay we should work together.’
I stared. A group of younger boys barrelled past yelling about dibs on something.
‘Sorry?’
‘English? Taking down the patriarchy one essay at a time? You, me, together? The people united will never be defeated?’
‘I’m not sure two students really count as a union.’
‘All greatness has to start somewhere. What’s that thing people say? If I throw rocks at people it’ll make ripples?’
‘Yeah, in that saying the rocks are kinda gently plopped into a pond as a symbol for one person creating change. It definitely isn’t about throwing rocks at people.’
‘Oh. That’s a shame. People are so selfish and rude.’ She chewed a fingernail absent-mindedly before adding. ‘And boring.’
‘I think squid are much nicer than people,’ I blurted out. Really, Brenna? That’ll be another ten points in the weirdo column.
‘Yeah, they’re pretty cool aren’t they?’ Marama said, apparently unfazed. ‘I’ve seen the colossal squid in the museum in Wellington. It reminded me of the Taniwha. It’s so beautiful, but seeing it like that … hunted and preserved and colourless. It made me incredibly sad.’
With a gut-stab, I wondered if pieces of Aunt Haven would be put on display in a museum. Sea monster exhibit — grand opening!
‘You’re from New Zealand aren’t you?’ I asked, instead.
‘Yeah. So don’t worry — I know what it’s like to be the New Kid.’ She winked at me, and added, ‘Fish and chips. Piss off, ghost. Six, six, six.’
‘Uhhh … what?’
‘Accent requests. Figured I’d get it out of the way.’
‘Oh. Yeah … What was that last one again?’
She saw my eyes flashing, laughed and jostled my shoulder. ‘You’re a cheeky one, aren’t you?’
I still carry the echoes of that laughter in my heart.
I thrash again and again, the water churning, growing muddier, darker. Debris — leaf litter, bark — swirls and stretches for the edge of the water, just as desperate to escape me.
Two days later, I tried to contain my nerves while Marama poked around my bedroom.
‘Cool gat,’ she said, picking up my guitar.
‘You know how to play?’ She wasn’t in the music class.
She sat on my bed, placed the guitar on her knee and proceeded to strum badly on the neck with one hand.
‘Not. At. All. But how do I look?’ She tossed her hair back and struck a pose.
She looked so sexy that my stomach flipped.
‘Well,’ I stalled. ‘You look like you don’t know how to hold a guitar properly …’
‘Teach me!’ She grinned and wriggled her shoulders in excitement. ‘Please!’
Her joy was infectious. I smiled back.
She patted the bed next to her. ‘I solemnly swear to be a diligent student.’
I ended up spending nearly an hour showing her how to hold the guitar and play different chords, all while trying to make as little physical contact as possible, which wasn’t easy. When we finally moved onto English she had returned the guitar gently to its stand.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and placed her hand on my arm. Goosebumps rippled across my skin.
I float, motionless. There is no undulation to the water and little particles float in the moonlight. I taste some experimentally. It is not food. I think I am troubled by this, but I’m no longer sure.
Marama kept coming back. I couldn’t find it in myself to tell her she shouldn’t. To tell her to stay away.
She also insisted my place was a much better study environment. And after visiting her place, I had to admit she was right. Her family all had the same easy smile, and a warmth about them that made me want to sign up to be adopted by them. No offence intended to my Mum — I just figured we could both move in. I was pretty sure the Paratas would’ve been on board, too, but Marama already shared a room with her older sister, Meri, and her two younger brothers were frequent visitors. I thought all their questions were pretty sweet, but Meri kept screaming ‘Pokokohua!’ which Marama said was a threat to boil their heads, and chasing them out.
So we worked at my place.
‘If you could be any character aboard the Pequod, who would you be and why?’ Marama lay draped across my bed and sucked on a pineapple lollipop between philosophising on Moby Dick. I sat on the floor with my laptop.
‘Pip,’ I replied instantly.
‘And why.’
‘Cos given half the chance I’d jump into the ocean too.’
‘Brenna?’
‘Yup?’ I responded, still typing.
‘You’re ridiculous.’
I looked up to fire back a retort. She was grinning at me. ‘It’s adorable,’ she added. She slid onto the floor next to me. I could smell the sugar on her breath. The air felt thick yet fragile. My heart thrummed as we sat there, breathing together.
‘Is it okay if I kiss you?’ she asked softly.
I nodded, not daring to voice just how okay it would be. How I’d been falling asleep to the dream of what that might be like. And then her hand was on my neck, fingers curling into my hair. Her lips were on mine and it wasn’t a dream — it was wet and real and more tender than I had imagined. I closed my eyes and fell gladly into this new world of ours. I let my hands slide around her, pulling her closer. She emitted a small moan of pleasure and the sound made my whole body ache in a way that I never thought would be possible with another person.
Listen. (Silence.) Move. (Wall.) Hunt. (Nothing.) Listen. (Silence.) Move. (Wall.) Hunt. (Nothing.) Listen. (Silence.) Move. (Wall.) Hunt. (Nothing.)
‘We need to talk.’ She pulled me aside in the school corridor and she wasn’t smiling. My body had flushed cold and a wave of nausea gripped my stomach.
‘Sure, what’s up?’
‘Where were you last night?’
My stomach cramped again.
‘Whaddaya mean?’
‘Don’t you dare pull that shit,’ she snapped. ‘I came around to yours and you weren’t there.’
‘Marama, I told you I couldn’t see you last night.’
‘And I want to know what the hell you were doing last night. Because most people are at home at ten pm on a school night. Your mum certainly was! And she had no idea where you were. So how about you tell me?’
‘I was—’ I swallowed. ‘I was—’
‘Oh just spit it out. If you’re interested in someone else just have the decency to tell me. I’m not a child — I need you to be honest with me.’
What could I have possibly told her?
I told her the truth. She refused to speak to me after that.
Nothing nothing nothing
I was lying on my bed listening to Tash Sultana sing my hurt when my door was flung open so hard it ricocheted.
‘Brenna, what are you still doing here? Get to the dam now.’ Mum’s words were stern and her eyes were panicked.
I looked at the time … I should have been waiting by the dam half an hour ago. Oh no.
I started to strip off some of my layers of clothing but Mum pushed me out of the room.
‘There’s no time. Go.’
She was right. The first convulsion hit and knocked me to my knees. Mum swore and helped me up, pushing, pushing.
‘Quick! Run!’
I ran for my life, my mother behind me every step to the water’s edge.
Something plunks into the water and falls away. A moment later, something does so again. A third plunk falls near me. I reach out a tentacle and grasp it.
It’s a rock.
A shiver runs along my tentacles. A memory stirs within. I see a flash. A yellow lollipop. Black hair. I recoil, uncertain, afraid.
I’m torn into pieces, my body transforming back. The p
ain is, as always, unbearable. Every cell screams. Suckers become fingers. Limbs flap, flail, all my watery grace gone. Two hearts become two lungs and the pounding is no longer life but death, air desperate to break free. I purse my lips; try and capture it tight. My feet touch ground and I push against it as hard as I can. My head breaks the surface and I breathe like this is the life I want.
There are lights on in the house; the darkness of a person in front of them. The silhouette is too tall and angular to be my mum.
It’s her.
My legs are shaking as I stumble out of the dam, and it’s not just from unfamiliarity with this form. I have never been this scared before. My feet drag in the mud, the water drips off my naked body and I start to shiver so badly that I stumble and fall. I’m on my knees, staring at the shallows and not sure I can even lift my head to look again, when a blanket is draped over me.
Marama crouches down in front of me. Her dark eyes are steady and I ground myself in her gaze.
‘Here,’ she reaches out slowly, touching my arm, tracing around to my elbow. She guides me upwards, taking most of my weight.
She holds me, quiet, while my trembling subsides. When I’m able to stand stably, she looks at me and speaks.
‘I’m really sorry, Brenna. I know that I hurt you, and I hope you can forgive me for being an egg.’
I take her hand, and entwine my fingers with hers.
‘Absolutely,’ I whisper, before I lean in and kiss her, our mouths merging like an ocean.
YVETTE WALKER
Yvette Walker is an award-winning novelist. She is a lesbian of Irish-Australian heritage. ‘Telephone’ is a fictional exploration of the difficulties she had as a teenager in coming to terms with her emerging queer sexuality. Yvette writes, ‘The story is an imagined conversation between me and my younger self. I didn’t want my story to be just focused on the difficulties of the coming out process. I think that’s why it ended up being a conversation with the future; with a happier time and place. Without wanting to tell readers what to think, or how to read the story, for me, it’s about courage. Looking back to my teenage self, I see someone who had a lot of courage; something I don’t think I understood or recognised at the time. It’s also about happiness. For centuries, gay, queer or lesbian life was written about as a life of unhappiness — I wanted the story to be about the everyday happiness of a lesbian woman.’
Telephone
The first call came at three-thirty in the afternoon.
Hello?
Hello, said a female voice, can I speak to Kristin?
There is no Kristin here, I said.
Oh, she was on last week — when is she coming back?
I’m sorry, there is no Kristin here.
Oh okay. Only, I called last week and Kristin told me to call back today. This is the gay and-lesbian-counselling-service? Only you didn’t say. I checked the number … I checked the number five times before I called.
The voice was young, maybe sixteen, hesitant. I said to the girl, No, this is not the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service — but I am gay, actually, well, I prefer lesbian — would you like to talk to me? Would that help? My name is Yvette.
Oh, said the girl, surprised. That’s my name too — Yvette. I’m Yvette too.
And I knew the voice. And I knew the voice was me. I didn’t know what to say.
Hello? said the girl, are you there? Hello? My dad will be home soon. I’m using the phone in his bedroom and I have to be out of here in a few minutes.
I sank slowly onto my bed. Well, we should talk then, I said to the girl, for a few minutes, or however long you’ve got.
I could hear the sound of the washing machine in my laundry, the sound of my wife mucking about with the washing, her whistling, the opening of the dryer door.
How are you? I said to the girl.
She found that funny. She laughed. I don’t remember finding anything funny when I was her age — when I was her. I don’t remember being able to laugh like that.
I relaxed a little. Yes, sorry, you’re calling a helpline, how good can you be? Let me try again. Tell me something about you, if you can. What’s going on?
There was a pause, as if the girl had left, and then, after a little while, she said, I feel like I’m thirty-feet underground, in the dark. I can’t talk to anyone. No one I know. Only Kristin, last week, and you now. You don’t know me, so I can talk to you. Maybe you can help me. I don’t know. But I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t breathe. I don’t remember the last time I took a breath.
That voice. The girl’s voice. How did everyone not know this girl was in trouble? Were they imbeciles? Blind? The girl was radioactive with emotion. I nodded, then realised I needed to say something.
I said to the girl, I understand, I do. I felt like that once. A long time ago. I know what you’re saying.
Then she said (to pivot away from the subject, that subject being herself) What number is this?
I didn’t know what to tell her. Should I tell her that my telephone was the size of a cigarette packet, that my number began with 041 and was ten digits long?
Can I have your number? the girl said. My Dad will be home soon and I have to, well, I have to make it look like I haven’t been in here, that I haven’t been using his telephone. I have to disappear. Can I have your number? I’d like to talk to you again, sometime, if that’s okay.
Yes, I said, not caring anymore that none of this was making sense. It’s a strange number, I said, but it will work. I don’t know how you got through to me, but I’m glad you did.
I gave her my number. She didn’t question it. Then she thanked me, and she hung up. My wife came into our bedroom with a basket full of clean washing. She clocked the iPhone in my hand.
Anyone interesting? she asked me.
1987, I replied.
Yeah, right — good one Yvette, she said.
Our sixteen-year old selves were here first. Twenty, thirty years on, we still use the same heart that began with them. All of our doing in the world, all of our striving and working and building stems from that same heart, that unique heart that started beating so loud, we thought the whole world could hear it, too.
If it was a queer heart, if it was a loud, strong queer heart, then for some of us, for most of us, it felt, for a time, like hearing our own doom. On hearing that queer heart, on recognising it, we dreaded exposure, we wanted to be invisible. Yet the heart beat on anyway, without permission from us, without judgement. It was us, and we knew it without wanting to know it. In time, we would embrace this strange thing, this beautiful queer heart. We would. But we needed time, time to come to terms with that. But time, when you’re sixteen, is so fast. We run, connections are made, broken, made again and we run, and everyone sees us, everyone knows everything, and we run, we watch others fall, we laugh at them, we mock them, and we run, packs merge and break apart, bones are broken, blood is spilt, friends are exiled and we run, we keep on running. Time, when you’re sixteen, is so fast that bodies grow with it and through it, minds expand and hearts learn to beat loud, very loud; the world sings and we sing with it.
This is what it could be like, what it was like, sometimes, at sixteen, other times it was like being adrift in a small boat without a horizon in sight, not a clue how to proceed and everything was folly; meaningless and beautiful all at once, like the open sea.
The second call came about a fortnight later. I was building a fire in the wood burning stove. I’d split three barrow loads of cypress logs and I was sore from the effort. But the cypress smelt sweet and the bark smelt of earth and everything was good so I just got on with making the fire. Twisting the newspaper until it looked like ugly origami. Building a cage for the twisty paper, setting the big log on top of the criss-crossed kindling. Setting it all alight, letting it catch, closing the door but keeping the flue open. Then my phone rang.
Hello? I said. There was no caller ID. Nothing.
Hi, said Yvette. It’s me. Can you talk? I’d like to tal
k, if you can.
This girl, this girl made my heart ache and I could barely breathe around it. Sure, I said. Sure, we can talk.
What are you doing? she asked me.
Building a fire. I’ve built a fire. It’s cold here today.
The girl asked, Where are you? (Oh God, I thought, excellent question — I’m thousands of miles and thirty years away.)
New Zealand, I said to her. I’m in New Zealand. And it’s raining.
Oh, the girl laughed.
That explains the strange number, the girl said.
Does it? I replied. Good then. How are you?
Ok, said the girl, when she plainly wasn’t. Something had happened since we’d talked last. It could have been one of a dozen things, one of a dozen injuries.
Why can I talk to you? the girl asked me. Why do I feel ok talking to you? Is it because we have the same name? And we sound alike. Have you noticed that? You have the same laugh as me.
I said to the girl, I know. I’ve noticed it as well. Tell me something. Tell me something about what is going on.
The summer is going on, the girl said to me, the summer won’t end. I don’t know what to do. I go to work, I buy records, I drive my car around, I go for a run. There are no more exams, I’ve passed them all. School is over. How can school be over? How can school end? My friends … Natalie has gone to Sydney with her family, and Shelley is still here but she’s always busy, with what, I don’t know. She’s going to UWA next year, if she gets a place, science degree she says, even though she wants to make films. I’ll get offered university places, my marks are good, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to ask about it.
No, I thought, you don’t. No one is offering to talk to you. No one cares, but it will take you years to understand why. The girl lived like a ghost in her own house, almost invisible, always unseen. It was confusing. Bewildering. She couldn’t think clearly.
And I’m on the other end of the line. Not being her anymore, and being an adult, I almost fall into the trap of asking her What do you want to do now you’ve left school? That ridiculous question that every generation asks its young because they aren’t honest enough to admit that no one has a bloody clue, that few people understand what they want, let alone how to get there, and we all settle, most of us, on something less than our dreams.
Meet Me at the Intersection Page 8